David Corn had a pretty big scoop the other day that’s only reinforced by today’s Plame
rumor du jour :

“Two words we should think about: sealed indictments.” That was said to me by a trustworthy Washington reporter who has been covering the Plame/CIA leak case. He wasn’t making a prediction; he was raising a possibility. It could be that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald might choose to file sealed indictments before the grand jury expires at the end of next week. That would mean that the names of the indicted would be unknown to the public–unless the information leaked.

Which would really mean that the White House talking point about not commenting on “an ongoing investigation” will morph into something like “we would be in contempt of the court if we were to discuss the contents of a sealed indictment”. In other words, even if it becomes common knowledge that Rove et. al. have been indicted, a seal would give them to plausible deniability to keep stonewalling.

Speaking of rumors, another big one from Steve Clemmons has Cheney stepping down and replaced by John McCain, Harrier Miers withdrawing, and the White House nominating an uber-conservative to spur a left-right fight that will distract from the Administration’s other troubles. Clemmons notes that the rumor stems from Republican circles which, to me, mean the rumors are equal parts wishful thinking and elephant shit. Despite conservative fantasies, Cheney wouldn’t step down to protect this Administration, McCain wouldn’t throw his political career away by jumping on board a sinking ship, and you’d have to be a complete moron to believe that a Supreme Court fight would be enough to distract people from an Administration reshuffling due to treason.

The rumor about Miers stepping down is something I’ve been meaning to comment on. At a certain point, the Administration will have to admit that backpedaling is less embarrassing than an inter-Republican fight in the Judiciary Committee. That said, I doubt the Miers fiasco will ultimately benefit conservatives as much as they think. From Bush’s standpoint, he’s nominating a stealth conservative that should slip beneath the radar, but his religious base is responding with a knife in the back. Needless to say, this isn’t going to make Bush feel like doing the religious right any favors next time around. If the President is still angry about the rebuke he got from the right over suggestions that Alberto Gonzales should be appointed, I think the easily-confirmable king of torture will take the next spot on our high court.

It seems like there are a few frayed nerves in Bushville:

You might have thought that the White House had enough on its plate late last month, what with its search for a new Supreme Court nominee, the continuing war in Iraq and the C.I.A. leak investigation. But it found time to add another item to its agenda – stopping The Onion, the satirical newspaper, from using the presidential seal.

The newspaper regularly produces a parody of President Bush’s weekly radio address on its Web site, where it has a picture of President Bush and the official insignia.

“It has come to my attention that The Onion is using the presidential seal on its Web site,” Grant M. Dixton, associate counsel to the president, wrote to The Onion on Sept. 28. (At the time, Mr. Dixton’s office was also helping Mr. Bush find a Supreme Court nominee; days later his boss, Harriet E. Miers, was nominated.)

Citing the United States Code, Mr. Dixton wrote that the seal “is not to be used in connection with commercial ventures or products in any way that suggests presidential support or endorsement.” Exceptions may be made, he noted, but The Onion had never applied for such an exception.

Does this mean I shouldn’t put one of these images on my site?

With only a few days left to toss around uninformed theories, here’s the latest Plame speculation which not only seems highly plausible to me, but further underscores the gravity of this scandal. Could Patrick Fitzgerald have evidence that the outing of Valerie Plame and her dummy company, Brewster, Jennings, & Associates, led to the murders of at least one CIA agent? Could that anonymous star in the CIA’s Book of Honor be the secret behind the eight classified pages in a court filing earlier this year? With phrases like “harmful to national security” and “gravity of the suspected crime” used by the judge who read those pages, we may be looking at something huge. If evidence that this leak caused serious harm to our country comes out in the indictments, well, let’s just say “criminalizing politics” will be the least of the Bush Administration’s worries.

Am I the only one annoyed by the term “Fitzmas”?

Remember last year when the conservative blogosphere was buzzing about John Kerry having botox? Apparently it’s not just the efette liberals who are having work done (via Andrew Sullivan) :

Mr. DeLay has had a makeover. National Journal reported that in 2003, right after he announced his bid for House Majority leader, DeLay “had his dentist cap his two upper front teeth to fill the small gap between them.
. . .
Then last year Roll Call reported, “Tom DeLay has joined the nip-and-tuck club.”

“I had my eyes checked by my ophthalmologist,” DeLay said last year; the newspaper reported that “his upper lids had become so heavy, as they are prone to do with age, that they were ‘blocking my vision.’ To show how well the surgery worked, he looked up. No more upper lid visor. ‘I can even see my eyebrows!’ he said.”

Looks like he had some rhinoplasty too, not that it’s a big deal. Seriously, I don’t care whether or not Tom DeLay had cosmetic surgery beyond the fact that it highlights, once again, the hypocrisy of Republican politicians whose entire careers are built on the lie that they’re more down-to-Earth than their Democratic opponents. I’m so goddamned tired of the “liberals are elitists” talking point, which seemed to soar to new heights in last years election with the endless carping about botox, windsurfing, and cheesesteaks “whiz with”. I wish for once we could just agree that all politicians are image-obsessed phonies and get back to the question about who would do a better job governing.

With indictments around the corner, people are starting to pay attention to the fact that the President has the ultimate “get out of jail free” card. As I wrote here last week :

The first thing they teach you in “Criminal Conspiracies 101″ is that you should always protect the boss. It’s especially true in this case since “the boss” has the power to pardon anyone who ends up getting in trouble along with the plausible deniability of being “in a bubble” and “completely retarded”.

Over at TPM Cafe, Jack Balkin reminds us that pardons go beyond just reversing convictions (via Atrios) :

But just remember that the President always has the means to stop judicial proceedings of his closest political associates from going any further. He can simply pardon persons indicted for a crime, or even those who have not yet been indicted.

On December 24th, 1992, a month before he left office, President Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, pardoned former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and five other individuals for their conduct related to the Iran-Contra affair. In so doing, Bush not only put an end to the criminal prosecutions arising out of the Iran-Contra affair, he also ensured that he would never be required to testify as a witness in a criminal trial after he left office.
. . .
If sufficiently high level officials are indicted, his son, President George W. Bush, may also be vulnerable to be called as a witness and placed under oath. The most obvious way to avoid that unhappy scenario is to make sure that no criminal trial ever occurs. The pardon power takes care of that.

This article has more background on the depth of the President’s pardon power. For somebody like Bush to have this much power is just scary :

Pardons can take place before or after a criminal proceeding. President Gerald Ford, for example, pardoned Richard Nixon before Nixon was ever charged with, let alone convicted, of any crime. Such pardons, however, are rare, and general procedures dictate that at least five years of a sentence should be served before a pardon is considered. In the Constitutional Convention of 1787, this issue was brought up and debated quickly, with no restriction on when a pardon might be granted, suggested by James Wilson as a way of obtaining the testimony of accomplices.

There are, however, things that a pardon cannot cover. The first and most obvious is impeachment, since it is specifically excepted in the Constitution. Civil liability cannot be excused – a harm against another can still be considered a harm even if there is no longer any criminal liability. Contempts of court cannot be pardoned, as they are offenses against the dignity of the court, and not necessarily offenses against the law. In the Constitutional Convention, a proposal to except treason was popular, but was defeated when the talk turned to granting the Senate only the power to pardon treason.
. . .
Finally, there is no review of pardons. This issue, too, was brought up in the Constitutional Convention, that pardons be granted with the consent of the Senate, but the measure was defeated 8-1. In modern days, there is an office in the Justice Department where pardons are sent, and a Pardons Attorney who reviews and recommends applications. The President may still receive pardons personally, and may grant them at any time. The President need not provide a reason for a pardon, and the courts and the Congress have no legal authority to approve, disapprove, reject, or accept a pardon.

Let’s not forget, this is the President who will always stand by his friends regardless of the political or practical consequences. Considering how much he “knows” the “hearts” of his staff, I think pardons are a certainty.

THE PRESIDENT: I signed that law. But Senator Kerry was part of an out-of-the-mainstream minority that voted against the ban. In the course of this campaign, he said the heart and soul of America can be found in Hollywood.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: No, most American families do not look to Hollywood as a source of values. The heart and soul of America is found in places like Alamogordo, New Mexico. (Applause.)

- October 24, 2004

THE PRESIDENT: And at one time in his campaign, he said the heart and soul of America can be found in Hollywood.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: Most of our families don’t look to Hollywood as a source of values. The heart and soul of America is found in communities like Orlando, Florida. (Applause.)

- October 30, 2004

THE PRESIDENT: You got some big differences in this campaign. One of them is that my opponent thinks you can find the heart and soul in Hollywood; I think you find it right here in Traverse City, Michigan. (Applause.)

- August 16, 2004

THE PRESIDENT: And at one time in this campaign, he actually said the heart and soul of America can be found in Hollywood.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: Most families do not look to Hollywood as a source of values. The heart and soul of America is found in caring communities like Toledo, Ohio. (Applause.)

- October 29, 2004

THE PRESIDENT: During this campaign, my opponent has said that you can find the heart and soul of America in Hollywood.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: Most American families do not look to Hollywood as a source of values. I believe the heart and soul of America is found in communities like Jacksonville, Florida. (Applause.)

- October 23, 2004

THE PRESIDENT: They somehow believe the heart and soul of America can be found in Hollywood.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: The heart and soul of America is found right here in Springfield, Missouri. (Applause.)

- July 30, 2004

THE PRESIDENT: There seems to be a difference of opinion about the heart and soul. I’m running against a fellow who thinks you can find the heart and soul in Hollywood.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: No, I know where you find the heart and soul of America, right here in places like Cambridge, Ohio. (Applause.)

- July 31, 2004

THE PRESIDENT: There seems to be a difference over the heart and soul of America. My opponents think you define the heart and soul of America in Hollywood.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: The true heart and soul of America is found right here in Canton, Ohio. (Applause.)

- July 31, 2004

THE PRESIDENT: And there seems to be a difference over the heart and soul of America. My opponents think you can find it in Hollywood. I think you find it right here in Grand Rapids, Michigan. (Applause.)

- July 30, 2004

THE PRESIDENT: At one point in this campaign, he actually said that the heart and soul of America can be found in Hollywood.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: That’s what he said. Most Americans do not look to Hollywood as a source of values. The truth of the matter is, the heart and soul of America is found in communities in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. (Applause.)

- October 28, 2004

THE PRESIDENT: My opponent has said that the heart and soul of America can be found in Hollywood.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: I understand most American families do not look to Hollywood as a source of values. (Applause.) The heart and soul of America is found in communities like Lakeland, Florida. (Applause.)

- October 23, 2004

Blah, blah, blah…

- October 22, 2004, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania

- October 27, 2004, Findlay “Flag City”, Ohio

- October 30, 2004, Grand Rapids, Michigan

- August 26, 2004, Farmington, New Mexico

- August 4, 2004, Davenport, Iowa

- August 18, 2004, St. Paul, Minnesota

- August 17, 2004, Hedgesville, West Virginia

- July 13, 2004, Marquette, Michigan

- July 13, 2004, Duluth, Minnesota

- August 18, 2004, St. Paul, Minnesota

- August 18, 2004, Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin

- August 26, 2004, Farmington, New Mexico

- August 5, 2004, Saginaw, Michigan

- August 17, 2004, Hedgesville, West Virginia

- August 16, 2004, Traverse City, Michigan

- August 4, 2004, Davenport, Iowa

- August 29, 2004, Wheeling, West Virginia

- October 30, 2004, Minneapolis, Minnesota

- October 28, 2004, Dayton, Ohio

- October 28, 2004, Westlake, Ohio

- October 28, 2004, Saginaw, Michigan

- October 26, 2004, Dubuque, Iowa

- August 29, 2004, Wheeling, West Virginia

- August 18, 2004, Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin

- October 23, 2004, Melbourne, Florida

[. . .]

“With the president’s staff apparently having disregarded a request to delay the California visit, Bush is scheduled to arrive at Los Angeles International Airport Thursday afternoon at the start of a two-day visit.
…
Then, the president will go to a Beverly Hills-area home for a fundraiser, attended by 100 couples, at which the Republican National Committee is expected to raise $1 million.”

- October 20, 2005

I would love to have sit in on the coversations about how DeLay should pose for this mugshot :

“Have you heard the joke about the murder for hire tied to one of my
business partners?”

For those of you who still think the Republican leadership is doing “god’s work”, you’re in for a surprise :



You’re getting bamboozled, religious voters. This mug shot is yet further proof.

Pundit-for-hire Maggie Gallagher is guest posting at the Volokh Conspiracy this week to spread her brain leaks on the subject of gay marriage. Here’s her argument in a nutshell :

The classification used in marriage (sexual union of male and female) is clearly substantively related to a legitimate state purpose (“procreation and paternity” or creating the only kind of sexual unions in which men and women can make babies and raise them together).

The fact that not all married couples have children does not make their marriage unrelated to this state purpose. At a minimum no married couples who lives up to their vows will produce out of wedlock children, so all unions of male and female serve these state purposes in a way that no same-sex couple can. The only practical way a couple can guarantee that all the children they conceive will have this benefit is to first enter an exclusive faithful sexual union..
. . .
(BTW, under the rational basis test, it is not even necessary to provide the evidence I’ve offered below that the one of theprimary purposes of marriage has long been understood to be procreation. The court must consider any conceivable rational reason the legislature may have had.)

Many folks in this debate want something else than a rational relation: they want direct evidence of the harm that would come to this purpose of marriage by including gay couples. That is an important question for a state legislature, but it is not (or should not) be necessary to justify our marriage laws under a rational basis test. (Some better scholar than I might want to contemplate what the idea of “substantive rational relations” is going to do to our constitutional theory)
. . .
(I think the actual role of the fact that some marriage couples have no children in the structure of the pro-SSM legal argument is to suggest that procreation is not now, nor has ever been, one of the primary purposes of marriage, and those who suggest this are hiding some other motive. I also think this argument is pretty hard to sustain, if reason prevails).

Or to translate that from masturbatory, philosophy-major prose back into English, “Marriage is about having babies!!”. In the course of her posts, she goes off on tangents about babies born out-of-wedlock, artificial insemination, etc., but she seems to be willfully ignoring the fact that her tired arguments already got their day in court and were rebuked by the Massachusetts Supreme Court.

The judge in the Superior Court endorsed the first rationale, holding that “the state’s interest in regulating marriage is based on the traditional concept that marriage’s primary purpose is procreation.” This is incorrect. Our laws of civil marriage do not privilege procreative heterosexual intercourse between married people above every other form of adult intimacy and every other means of creating a family. General Laws c. 207 contains no requirement that the applicants for a marriage license attest to their ability or intention to conceive children by coitus. Fertility is not a condition of marriage, nor is it grounds for divorce. People who have never consummated their marriage, and never plan to, may be and stay married. See Franklin v. Franklin, 154 Mass. 515, 516 (1891) (“The consummation of a marriage by coition is not necessary to its validity”). People who cannot stir from their deathbed may marry. See G. L. c. 207, ? 28A. While it is certainly true that many, perhaps most, married couples have children together (assisted or unassisted), it is the exclusive and permanent commitment of the marriage partners to one another, not the begetting of children, that is the sine qua non of civil marriage.

Moreover, the Commonwealth affirmatively facilitates bringing children into a family regardless of whether the intended parent is married or unmarried, whether the child is adopted or born into a family, whether assistive technology was used to conceive the child, and whether the parent or her partner is heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual. If procreation were a necessary component of civil marriage, our statutes would draw a tighter circle around the permissible bounds of nonmarital child bearing and the creation of families by noncoital means. The attempt to isolate procreation as “the source of a fundamental right to marry,” overlooks the integrated way in which courts have examined the complex and overlapping realms of personal autonomy, marriage, family life, and child rearing. Our jurisprudence recognizes that, in these nuanced and fundamentally private areas of life, such a narrow focus is inappropriate.

The “marriage is procreation” argument singles out the one unbridgeable difference between same-sex and opposite-sex couples, and transforms that difference into the essence of legal marriage. Like “Amendment 2″ to the Constitution of Colorado, which effectively denied homosexual persons equality under the law and full access to the political process, the marriage restriction impermissibly “identifies persons by a single trait and then denies them protection across the board.” In so doing, the State’s action confers an official stamp of approval on the destructive stereotype that same-sex relationships are inherently unstable and inferior to opposite-sex relationships and are not worthy of respect.

Whoever has been buying Maggie Gallagher’s opinions is getting ripped off.

On the one hand, the revelation from a couple of weeks ago that things weren’t as bad at the Superdome as originally reported is great news, but the flip side of that coin is that the feds were even bigger screwups than we thought :

The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s lack of planning, not the failures of state and local officials, was to blame for much of what went wrong with the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told member of Congress today.

The assessment by the most senior administration official to answer legislators’ questions since the hurricane struck in late August contrasted sharply with testimony offered earlier by former FEMA Director Michael Brown. Brown had blamed the “dysfunction” of Louisiana state and local officials for the problems that hobbled the relief effort.

“From my own experience, I don’t endorse those views,” Chertoff said.

He told lawmakers that he found the governors and mayors of the region to be responsive as the crisis unfolded.

None of this diplomatic “everyone deserves a little blame” crap. According to the guy who oversees the agency, FEMA screwed up. It’s a shame we exhausted the “fiddling while Rome burns” metaphor last month, because I can’t think of a better way to describe this infuriating revelation :

In e-mails to various FEMA officials, including one to Brown, Bahamonde described a chaotic situation at the Superdome, where many of the evacuees were sheltered. Bahamonde e-mailed FEMA officials and noted also that local officials were asking for toilet paper, a sign that supplies were lacking at the shelter.

“Issues developing at the Superdome. The medical staff at the dome says they will run out of oxygen in about two hours and are looking for alternative oxygen,” Bahamonde wrote in an e-mail to David Passey, an assistant to Brown, in late afternoon on Aug. 28.

Less than an hour later, Bahamonde wrote: “Everyone is soaked. This is going to get ugly real fast.”

Bahamonde said he was stunned that FEMA officials responded by sending truckloads of evacuees to the Superdome on that day even though they knew supplies were in short supply.

“I thought it amazing,” he said. “I believed at the time and still do today, that I was confirming the worst-case scenario that everyone had always talked about regarding New Orleans.”

Later, on Aug. 31, Bahamonde frantically e-mailed Brown to tell him that thousands are evacuees were gathering in the streets with no food or water and that “estimates are many will die within hours.”

“Sir, I know that you know the situation is past critical,” Bahamonde wrote.

Less than three hours later, however, Brown’s press secretary wrote colleagues to complain that the FEMA director needed more time to eat dinner at a Baton Rouge restaurant that evening. “He needs much more that (sic) 20 or 30 minutes,” wrote Brown aide Sharon Worthy.

“We now have traffic to encounter to go to and from a location of his choise (sic), followed by wait service from the restaurant staff, eating, etc. Thank you.”

One has to wonder, is there anything important enough to interrupt dinner for the Michael Browns of the world? You’d think the man in charge of federal emergency management would, y’know, order take-out or something. For those of you keeping score, the death toll for Hurricane Katrina is 1281.

For those of you suffering from P.I.S.S., Pre-Indictment Stress Syndrome (hat tip, simplexity), kick it to this tasty groove from Tenacious D’s forthcoming movie :

The Government Totally Sucks

I promise it’ll rock your socks off.

On Hardball yesterday, Pat Buchanan made a good point that doesn’t get mentioned enough (via DKos) :

MATTHEWS: Do you think Judy Miller was writing stories on the front page of the New York Times on Sunday which then, of course, became the platform of discussion on the Sunday talk shows, saying there were weapons of mass destruction.

So, it wasn‘t just one side that was leaking it.

BUCHANAN: Chris, you are right on it right there. The success here and Mr. Gergen and Buchanan were never able to achieve it—the folks in Cheney‘s office and the White House turned the New York Times, the newspaper of record in this country into a propaganda organ for the war party.

Now he goes on to speculate about the Niger forgeries, but I haven’t followed that particular aspect of this story to comment on it. The Times as propaganda angle, however, is one that was identified by the Globe & Mail two and a half years ago :

Take the case of staff reporter Judith Miller, who covers the atomic bomb/chemical-weapons-fear beat, and hasn’t heard a scare story about Iraq that she didn’t believe, especially if leaked by her White House friends. On Sept. 8, 2002, Ms. Miller and her colleague Michael Gordon helped co-launch the Bush II sales campaign for Saddam-change with a front page story about unsuccessful Iraqi efforts to purchase 81-mm aluminum tubes, allegedly destined for a revived nuclear weapons program.

Pitched to a 9/11-spooked public and a gullible, cowardly U.S. congress, the aluminum tubes plant was a big component of the “weapons of mass destruction” canard, which resulted in hasty House and Senate war authorization on Oct. 11.
. . .
When officials leak a “fact” to Ms. Miller, they then can cite her subsequent stenography in the Times as corroboration of their own propaganda, as though the Times had conducted its own independent investigation. On Sept. 8, Dick Cheney cited the Times’s aluminum tubes nonsense on Meet the Press to buttress his casus belli.

More recently, on May 23, former CIA director and Bush apologist James Woolsey was challenged by CNN International’s Daljit Dhaliwal in very un-Timesian fashion about the absence of weapons and the world’s resulting skepticism. Mr. Woolsey replied, “Well, I think the key thing on that is the very fine reporting that’s been done by Judith Miller of The New York Times. The first article on the front page was three or four weeks ago, about this Iraqi scientist who was captured by the Americans, who was in charge of a major share of the nerve gas program, and was apparently ordered just as the war began to destroy a substantial share of what he had and to hide very deeply the rest.”

It’s a con game so brilliant it would be impressive were it not also responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent people. It goes like this :

Powerful officials in Washington “leak” misinformation that they want to become conventional wisdom to members of the press corps too timid enough to burn their connections with government insiders.

The press dutifully prints the leaked information without checking it (or worse, verifying it with a second official who’s part of the chain), without realizing that their desperation for a scoop has them essentially echoing bullshit.

Government officials on talk shows, the Senate floor, and the bully pulpit cite the questionable press reports as “proof” of their misinformation.

Bullshit to unquestionable fact in three easy steps. This should come as no surprise to anyone who watched the “debate” over the Iraq War Resolution. Over and over, the men and women of the Senate cited various branches of the dreaded MSM in their arguments to take the country to war. All without ever mentioning the questionable sources upon which the media’s accounts were relying. You see a similar tactic in the debates over Medicare, abortion, Social Security, no child left behind, etc. and as long as the lies don’t catch up to anybody, this cycle will continue.

Mickey Kaus’ ignorant assumptions about how liberals think are on full display today :

Miller wasn’t just perceived as in cahoots with neocons in foisting the war off onto the public. She was doing it from within the New York Times, which the Left correctly perceives as one of “its” institutions. As a traitor within the liberal camp, she has to be expelled and punished, in a way she wouldn’t be punished if she’d been an equally mistaken and influential reporter for National Review. The host body rejects her.

I dunno about you, but this liberal has never felt an affinity for the NY Times more than I have for any other news organization with a reputation (deserved or not) for honest, unbiased reporting. I consider the Washington Post and CNN to be equally credible, so the idea that the only problem liberals would have with Judy Miller is that she sullied our paper is sheer lunacy. If the right-wing in this country is so insecure about their own beliefs that they consider any newspaper that strays from the party line as “liberal”, then so be it. But don’t project your paranoid delusions on us.

For some reason, criminals hate being treated like criminals :

A Texas court on Wednesday issued a warrant for former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s arrest, and set an initial $10,000 bail as a routine step before his first court appearance on conspiracy and state money laundering charges.

Travis County court officials said DeLay was ordered to appear at the Fort Bend County, Texas, jail for booking, where he’d likely be fingerprinted and photographed. DeLay’s lawyers had hoped to avoid such a spectacle.

True, the GOP hates to cause a spectacle :

I’m guessing the GOP isn’t nearly as proud of their ink-stained fingers as they used to be…